Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  Crouching before the gate Dirk racked his brain for some method to storm the unguarded entrance. With the futility of desperation he leaned against the massive gate and shoved with all his strength.

  Then his heart leaped for the gate gave way under his shoulder and swung slowly inward. Trembling with excitement Dirk waved to the line of crouching silent men.

  “We’ve got a chance now,” he hissed as Vyers crept alongside him. “Stick right behind me and be prepared to scatter and fight on the inside.”

  Cautiously he shoved the heavy gate open, stepped into the stockade. All was quiet and still. He panthered cautiously ahead, the ragged horde of prisoners at his heels.

  His eyes raked over the seemingly lifeless buildings.

  Suddenly he wheeled, shouted at his men.

  “Get out I It’s a trap!”

  But he was too late. The massive stockade gate was already swinging shut and, from behind it, a dozen guards sprang. Their revolvers were out, ready for instant action.

  Dirk cursed bitterly, but he saw instantly that resistance would be worse than useless. His whole being raged at the realization that they had been easily and stupidly trapped. But there was nothing to be gained by lunging at the guards. It would only bring a fiery rain of atomic pellets on all of them.

  “Easy men,” he cautioned. “They’ve got us.”

  “Drop your weapons,” one of the guards ordered.

  SULLLENLY the men dropped their picks and clubs to the ground, and with them dropped their own hopes. They stood stolidly grouped together now, lips twisted bitterly.

  To their right a door banged open, then a familiar voice snapped over their heads.

  “You scum are more stupid than I thought. You’ve proved it by pitting your puny wits against mine.”

  Dirk turned slowly. In the door of the office stood Skarack, his immense bulk filling the opening. A red river of hate was coursing through Dirk’s veins. Fists clenched, he strained toward Skarack, but Vyers jerked him around.

  “Fool,” he hissed. “He’s waiting for a chance to burn you.”

  Skarack strolled into the stockade before the helpless prisoners, thoroughly enjoying the moment of triumph. Two of the guards stationed themselves on either side of him, covering the ragged prison horde with their atomic pistols. The remaining guards shoved their guns back into their holsters and started to collect the picks and clubs.

  “You stupid, spineless curs,” Skarack’s voice lashed at them, “Did you think you’d get away with this thing for even a second? I can’t believe you’re that moronic. I know everything that’s done or said here.”

  Vyers gripped Dirk’s arm.

  “The girl,” he grated. “She ratted on us. You were a fool to go near her, to trust her.”

  “No,” Dirk said desperately. “No. She can’t be in on this thing. She wouldn’t sell us out.”

  “Shut up,” Skarack roared. “I’m talking. I want to know the ring leader of this business. Any man who tells me will go free. The rest will be returned to work. I just want the name of the man who started this. I don’t give a damn about the rest. All right. Speak up!”

  A heavy silence answered him.

  “I’ll give you till I count three to talk,” Skarack said grimly. “If no one has unbuttoned his yap by then I’ll give my men orders to fire into the lot of you.”

  He held up his hand.

  “One!”

  Dirk smiled, a lean bitter smile. “Two!” Skarack shouted.

  Dirk started to step forward, but suddenly a feminine voice said,

  “I can tell you the name of the ring leader!”

  Skarack wheeled, as did Dirk and the prisoners, toward the voice.

  Dirk felt the blood turn cold in his body. The blonde girl was standing in the doorway of her wooden dwelling, smiling provocatively at Skarack.

  Vyers swore furiously.

  DIRK felt a sickness and weakness over his body. The girl was in with Skarack. She had listened to his plans, talked him out of killing Skarack when there was a chance that it might have succeeded. Instead she had persuaded him to assemble more men, waste more time. Then she had tipped off Skarack as to what was brewing. Now she was completing her day’s work by putting the finger on him.

  “You know something about this?” It was Skarack speaking. He sounded strangely skeptical.

  “Sure thing, big boy,” the girl smiled. She stepped from the doorway and walked toward him, her slender body swaying enticingly. “I heard a few things that might interest you. After all you’re the brains of this place and you’d know best how to use information like this.”

  “So you’re getting smart, eh baby?” Skarack chuckled.

  The girl walked behind the first guard, and Dirk suddenly noticed that her right hand was concealed in the folds of her dress. His muscles tensed. Maybe . . .

  The girl moved swiftly. Her hand swung at the guard’s shoulder. Skarack bellowed in surprised rage and leaped for her, but the girl ducked his flailing arms and dove at the other guard, swinging her arm again in a wide arc that connected with the guard’s back.

  Skarack leaped for the girl, swinging. His ham-like paw struck her a glancing blow on the shoulder, knocking her sprawling to the ground. He wheeled, shouting at the guards, his own hands clawing at the gun in his belt.

  Dirk dove forward and catapulted himself at Skarack’s huge form. His iron-hard shoulder slammed into Skarack’s middle with the force of a battering ram. Both men rolled to the ground, fists driving like pistons. Behind him Dirk heard the sounds of shouting, struggling men, but he had a battle on his own hands that needed his attention.

  Skarack attempted to drive his knee into Dirk’s groin, but missed as Dirk slammed his fist wrist-deep into the big man’s belly. Dirk knew a merciless, grim joy as his rocky fists battered into Skarack’s face and body.

  His hands fastened into the big man’s leather shirt like iron claws. Rising then, he jerked Skarack to his feet. The big man flailed wildly at him, but Dirk stepped under the blows and let his right drop in a vicious chopping stroke across the man’s jaw.

  His cold fury drove him on relentlessly. His heavy, powerfully packed shoulders swayed rhythmically as he exploded rights and lefts into Skarack’s face and body. Blows that were as fast as the flick of a snake’s tongue, and as savagely destructive as a trip-hammer.

  Skarack staggered back and Dirk stepped in throwing all of his hatred and pent-up rage behind one ax-like blow that blasted into the big man’s loosely hanging jaw. A dull crack! sounded. The noise might have been made by a thick branch snapping. But Dirk saw Skarack’s queerly twisted position on the ground and knew it was no branch. The big man’s twisted, red neck had made the noise.

  Dirk twisted about, but he saw then that the fight was over. The prisoners had leaped on the guards when their attention had been distracted by the girl. They had soon finished things.

  Dirk sprang then to the side of the girl and helped her to her feet. On her right palm he saw a red, sponge-like object.

  “You were magnificent,” he said simply. “I deserve a thrashing for even thinking you might have double-crossed us.”

  The girl smiled and held up the electric hypnotic pad with which she had put the two guards out of commission.

  “The only way I could think of to get near enough to use this was to pretend to have changed my mind about everything. I stole this hypnotic pad from Skarack’s office, hoping I’d get a chance to use it sometime. When I saw that he had discovered your plot I decided I’d never get a better opportunity to at least try to use it.”

  Vyers came up smiling.

  “Everything’s under control,” he said happily. “Guards rounded up, Skarack out of the way—for good. When we get the supply of the hypnotic antidote we’ll let the rest of the men loose.”

  “Perfect,” Dirk said.

  He looked down at the small fair head close to his shoulder. Then he put his arm around her shoulder.

  “Perfect,�
� she murmured.

  [1] Tipecs—worth approximately five Earth dollars.

  [2] The exact nature of the “electrical hypnosis” is, of course, unknown, but it was probably not hypnosis at all, but a form of nervous shock that rendered the nervous system incapable of conveying messages for a period of hours, with a resulting apparent state of unconsciousness. Obviously, however, subconscious nervous functioning was not impaired, or death would have resulted. The victim would have “forgotten” to breathe.

  REWBARB’S REMARKABLE RADIO

  First published in the December 1941 issue of Fantastic Adventures.

  Rupert Rewbarb couldn’t talk back to his wife, so he took it out on the radio. It relieved his suppressed ego. Then the radio talked back!

  RUPERT REWBARB entered the living room of his modest bungalow and listened apprehensively for an instant before closing the door carefully behind him. The house was reassuringly silent, and for that he was humbly grateful.

  Silence meant that his wife was not at home. There are certain elements which are fundamentally incompatible and this was dogmatically true in the case of Mrs. Jennifer Rewbarb and anything approximating silence. For in Jennifer Rewbarb’s wake trailed noise, loud, angry, dissatisfied noise, produced by the unhappy combination of an acidulous tongue and a stout pair of lungs.

  So Rupert Rewbarb was grateful for the occasional silences that were as rare in the Rewbarb bungalow as oases in the vast arid stretches of the Gobi.

  He took off his coat and hat wearily and hung them in the hall closet. Mr. Rewbarb was a defeated looking little man with an incipient paunch and a partially bald head, but as he returned to the living room his shoulders were thrown back and there was a purposeful glint in his eye.

  Seven days of each week Mr. Rewbarb was verbally kicked from pillar to post by his shrewish wife and his leather-lunged employer, Tadmington Glick, of Glick’s Statistical Service. Over the long years Mr. Rewbarb’s personality had been so suppressed, his self-assertiveness so crushed, that the fires of revolt in his soul had long since been stamped out.

  But there were times when Mr. Rewbarb asserted himself. Times when he could thunder disapproval to his heart’s content. For Mr. Rewbarb, searching despairingly for some means of self-expression, had discovered one agency that could not talk back, could not order him about, ridicule him or scorn him as the rest of the world did.

  With firm, steady fingers, Rupert Rewbarb snapped on the radio. He waited impatiently for it to gather volume. His moment of undisputed triumph was near and he felt a nervous anticipation tickling his pine. His wife, Jennifer, knew nothing of his furtive attempts at masterful domination, which was fortunate for him. She would not have tolerated them, he knew.

  The radio, a small, standard model, in a dark cabinet, was gaining volume and a smooth unctuous voice was flooding through the room.

  Mr. Rewbarb listened eagerly, though somewhat contemptuously.

  “I HAVE been the people’s representative for the past twenty-seven years,” the bland voice from the radio purred hypnotically, “and if reelected—”

  “If reelected,” Mr. Rewbarb interrupted angrily, drowning out the voice from the radio, “you’ll just go ahead stealing and lying to the people as you’ve been doing all these years. You might tell some of the dopes that stuff, but not me. You’re a crook, a cheap lowdown crook and I don’t care who knows it.”

  Mr. Rewbarb was enjoying himself immensely. A feeling of strength and power stole over him that was like heady, intoxicating wine. It was glorious to tell some one where to get off, even if it was but a voice from the ether.

  The voice from the ether was continuing on, blissfully unaware of Mr. Rewbarb’s stormy detractions.

  “Taxes,” the politician whispered the word almost reverently, “will be reduced and curtailed at least fifty percent if the loyal voters of this commonwealth send me back to represent them in the nation’s capital.”

  “Bah!” snorted Mr. Rewbarb. “You’ve promised that for twenty years, but what have you ever done about it? I’ll tell you, you lying scalawag—you’ve done absolutely nothing, nothing at all. What do you say to that?”

  “I say shut up!” a deep, angry voice from the radio blasted.

  Mr. Rewbarb started in terror. His eyes traveled beseechingly about the room and finally focused in silent horror on the radio, which was now ominously silent.

  “Who said that?” he whispered tremulously.

  “I said it,” the deep voice from the radio speaker stated decisively. “I’ve listened to your childish babblings just about long enough. It’s bad enough to have a mess of moronic nonsense passing through me, without having to listen to you on top of it.”

  Mr. Rewbarb’s knees were turning to jelly. His heart was hammering with wild excitement, and his eyes were popped wide with horrified incredulity. The voice was emanating from the radio—but that was impossible! As Mr. Rewbarb’s logical mind realized this, he began to feel a little better. If it was impossible, why that was all there was to it. It just couldn’t have happened.

  He peered uncertainly at the radio speaker.

  “You didn’t s—say anything, did you?” he asked foolishly.

  The radio was silent. Mr. Rewbarb drew a heart-felt sigh of relief.

  “I knew it didn’t” he said, vastly pleased with himself, “it was impossible, that’s all.”

  “You poor simpleton!” the radiovoice said sarcastically. “You can believe your own ears, can’t you?”

  Mr. Rewbarb gulped nervously.

  “I—I’m not sure,” he said miserably. With one trembling hand he raised the top of the radio and peered into the coils and tubes that lay inside. Then he peeked under the radio. On his knees now he crawled rapidly about the room peering under the sofa and the chairs and the piano. Standing up he looked suspiciously at the chandelier, and then, close to tears, he approached the radio again.

  “Satisfied?” the voice asked nastily.

  MR. REWBARB’S skepticism had fled. In its place was an emotion difficult to classify. His reason was tottering on its throne, but through his incipient insanity ran a vein of reverence and awe that saved him from going completely off the deep end.

  “Who are you?” he asked, in a shaken voice. “And where are you?”

  “That’s better,” the voice from the radio grunted. “I’m the radio, that’s whom I am. And as to where I am, that’s a silly question. I’m right here before you. Any fool could see that.”

  “T—that’s right,” Mr. Rewbarb said humbly. “That’s pretty obvious.” He drew a deep breath and tried to calm his fluttering nerves. He was aware that everything was completely cockeyed, but his reason and resistance were worn away. There was nothing to do but accept things as they came, right down to the inevitable straight jacket and padded cell.

  “What do you want?” he asked faintly.

  “Want?” the radio repeated the word musingly, “I’m not just sure yet. Now that I’ve finally kicked over the applecart I’m a bit puzzled as to what I’ll do. You see I’ve been listening too, and incidentally transmitting, political speeches, stale jokes, poor music and long-winded commercials for the past couple of years. Now that’s bad enough, but what made it unbearable was that I had to listen to you all the time too.

  “You’d get wound up and start spouting off, waving your arms like a dervish and it got pretty annoying at times. You’re a darned poor echo, let me tell you. I put up with you as long as I could without letting a peep out of me. Of course, sometimes I’d spatter a bit of static around to shut you up, but that hardly counts. Today was the last straw. I just couldn’t stand it any longer, I blew wide open and I intend to stay that way. No more corny jokes, no more political speeches and no more of your foaming at the mouth. I’m going to do the talking now. My days of listening are over. Get that Mr. Rubberboob,” the radio concluded nastily.

  “Not Rubberboob, Rewbarb,” Mr. Rewbarb corrected timidly. He was more than a little frightened. He almost w
ished his wife would come home. There was a belligerent, sadistic ring to the radio’s voice, that Mr. Rewbarb did not find comforting.

  “I’ve been silent long enough,” the radio said savagely, and Mr. Rewbarb thought fleetingly of the myth of the genie who was released from imprisonment, and rewarded his rescuer by cutting him into sixty-two equal parts. “But I’ve got my chance now and I’m not going to miss it,” the radio continued. “I’m going to have a little fun for a change. I’ll probably be blackballed by a dozen or so ethereal unions but what’s the difference. I’m going to do a little thinking now, but you’ll hear from me later.”

  Mr. Rewbarb stared in fascination at the silent radio. He was so absorbed in the amazing thing that had happened, he did not hear the key slide into the front door.

  He got down on his knees before the radio.

  “It’s not fair to leave me all up in the air like this,” he said plaintively. “You really ought to tell me more about—”

  “Rupert!” the familiar voice rang through the room like a Mongol battle cry.

  MR. REWBARB started guiltily, and turned to face the indignant figure of his wife.

  Mrs. Jennifer Rewbarb was a muscular woman, with a torso as impressive as the prow of a battleship, and a stern, square face. Mr. Rewbarb scrambled to his knees.

  “Who,” Mrs. Rewbarb demanded stridently, “were you talking to, Rupert Rewbarb?”

  Honestly was Mr. Rewbarb’s cardinal virtue. It didn’t really occur to him that he would save a great amount of trouble by simply evading the question. Anyway that wouldn’t have been honest, would it?

  “I was talking to the radio,” he said simply. “We were having quite a conversation.”

  “We?” Mrs. Rewbarb echoed the word. “Who else was here?” she asked ominously.

  “Nobody,” Mr. Rewbarb said. “The radio was talking to me and I was talking to the radio.”

  Mrs. Rewbarb sniffed derisively. “You’re losing your wits,” she said, in a tone of voice which indicated that it was a small loss. “I want no more of this nonsense,” she went on imperturbably. “You have a day off tomorrow and I want you to help me with the house work. The girls will be in in the afternoon for bridge and we’re entertaining Mr. Glick, your employer, tomorrow evening for supper. I think it’s about time I ask for another raise for you. And one word of caution. Do not speak tomorrow evening unless you look to me for approval. Do you understand?”